They Bleed Pixels

Featuring a distinct visual style that blends pixel art with paper and ink textures, They Bleed Pixels is a singular mix of intense platforming and fierce beat 'em up action. It tells the story of a young girl haunted by a mysterious book and her violent Lovecraftian nightmares.

Explore exotic dreamscapes populated with bizarre creatures... then stab them in the face!

They Bleed Pixels uses a simple one-button combat scheme with surprising depth at its core. Button mashing is discouraged while kicking shadowy monsters into saws, pits and spikes is rewarded thanks to a unique checkpoint earning system. Instead of being evenly distributed at set locations, players must earn and place checkpoints through stylish kills. The more stylishly you kill, the faster you fill your checkpoint meter. Avoid combat or button mash mindlessly and you’ll find checkpoints uncomfortably far apart.

When a young girl arrives at the Lafcadio Academy for Troubled Young Ladies, she's unprepared for the violent nightmares that plague her dreams and transport her to other worlds. Worse yet, her dreams are intruding into her waking life, slowly altering her flesh into the demonic form of her night terrors. Can she destroy the mysterious blood-soaked book that appears to be the root of her troubles or will her transmutation from girl to clawed horror become complete?

Darkly cute story of ancient evil told through lush pixel art motion comics with professional sound design by Troy Morrissey and Indie Game Audio.

With full Steamworks support there's lots to do after you've completed story mode including individual level letter rankings and 150 skill based achievements. Record, play and share your best runs on the online leaderboards* and watch the top players to improve your runs. Plus cloudsave* means you can continue your game anywhere!

*Online leaderboards and cloudsave require Steam version.

Music

They Bleed Pixels includes a full album's worth of original electronic music by DJ Finish Him (aka Shaun Hatton) composed with synthesizers, unconventional instruments and gadgets often not meant for musical use.

Buy the full 2 hour soundtrack including outtakes and remixes not found in the game on Bandcamp.

Guest & Bonus Levels

In addition to the main game, we've invited friends from the local indie game community to create bonus levels for They Bleed Pixels. We then worked with each of them to create visual mashups letting a little of their game worlds leak into ours.

In addition to themed guest levels created by outside game designers we occasionally create and release new bonus levels with a seasonal theme.

All Hallows EveSet in a pumpkin infested graveyard this puzzle based level is unlike anything in the main game. Throw enemies into deadly traps to gain access to stashes of delicious candy. Find all 100 candy bits and compete in the high score leaderboard.

Winter's EndAn action oriented level set amongst icy hills blanketed in snow, pierced by stone tablets, carvings of animal totems and ancient symbols. Filled with unique opportunities for environmental kills as well as an optional high stakes challenge to collect six rare crimson snowflakes.

I've been posting progress on Russian Subway Dogs pretty regularly on twitter, but it can be hard to hunt them down if you miss them. I figure it'd be good to have them all in one place, so what I'm planning on doing is posting a big gallery round up of all the images approximately once a month.